


To Worship the Sun

by kenzimone



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: 1sentence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-10
Updated: 2006-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 12:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzimone/pseuds/kenzimone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with fire, and the way Warren smells as he shields her from the flames (thick black smoke into her lungs and his touch as he carries her away from the burning buildings and his father’s reach).</p><p>50 sentences, one pairing. Warren/Magenta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Worship the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Ordinary sentences somehow turned into run-on ones, and I apologize for that. Many of these tie in with my previous Sky High fic, _Blueprints_ , in the way that they mention Magenta’s parents and her future plans. You’ll also find a gracious sprinkling of Warren/Freeze Girl throughout this post. When you review, please tell me which sentence you liked the best. Enjoy!

**#39 – Smile**  
Magenta doesn’t know _why_ Warren stopped smiling (he does so often in the baby pictures his mother’s shown her), but once she realizes that it’s not because he’s not _happy_ she stops trying to get him to – maybe it’s even better this way, she muses, because as it is, every single one of Warren’s smiles (not grins or smirks or the showings of teeth he hides behind) seems like a gift, and when he turns to _her_ and smiles, it’s like sunlight blessing her and making her heart shatter all over again.

 **#46 – Sun**  
Prior to freshman year, Magenta could never imagine why many years ago, people would ever come up with the idea of worshiping such a dull and lifeless thing as the sun; it’s only post-Warren that she understands, that she realizes how the heat and flames and light form a vacuum strong enough to kill and give birth and turn things into _nothingness_ , and how she herself is no better than the old Greeks, because where they sacrificed animals and covered their altars in blood for the fear of a deity, she has offered her heart and being for the love of a boy.

 **#02 - Kiss**  
Magenta’s belly swells at an astonishing rate, ballooning out from beneath her shirt even as early as four months along, and Warren’s there to satisfy all her strange food cravings (like pickles and ice cream on rye) and watch her wolf them down with dancing eyes; afterwards they’ll curl up on the couch, and she’ll cover his hands on her stomach with her own and bite back a giggle as he leans down to place a kiss on her skin.

 **#30 - Star**  
Warren walks her home, their shoulders touching and their palms pressed together, fingers entwined, and the sky is dark and starry; he presses warm lips to hers in a quick kiss (her father’s watching from the upstairs bedroom window) and remains on the sidewalk, watching beneath the twinkling sky, as she opens the front door and slips in – on the second and third and fourth date through their wedding and her first baby shower, the only thing she has to do to remember the feeling of that first night is look up and find that one star she picked out as _theirs_ even when before, when they weren’t even _one_ inseparable piece.

 **#44 - Heaven**  
The summer after freshman year is full of lazy days, and come Layla’s turn to chose what to do they gather outside Will’s house and head for the beach – Magenta tilts her head back against the sun as Layla stretches out in the sand beside her, eyes on the boys’ play in the water; ‘this,’ she says, ‘is heaven’, and watching Warren, his pants rolled up to his knees, hair wet and plastered to his face and an uncharacteristic smile grazing his features, Magenta can’t help but agree that yeah, maybe it is.

 **#34 - Lightning/Thunder**  
Love, Magenta decided, was just like flashes of lightning searing through her heart; it was the redness spreading across her face when he looked her way and the shortness of breath whenever they passed each other in the hallways and his eyes acknowledged their acquaintance even when his actions did not – only, with lightning comes thunder, but the rumbling pain in her chest whenever Warren smiles or touches the blonde’s shoulder is something Magenta’s willing to endure, because there is no other way she’s going to know that this is _real_.

 **#24 – Taste**  
Magenta’s oldest daughter pulls the tanktop out of the back of her mother’s closet and frowns in distaste – she throws it haphazardly onto the bed behind her, and Magenta’s quick to overstep the more expensive dress pants sliding slowly to the wooden floor to pick the tanktop up and carefully drape it over the back of a chair; her daughter’s mouth twitches, as if she’s about to comment about the awful taste in fashion of the late nineties generation, but instead she turns away and leaves her mother to contemplate the old and faded garment, and wonder if maybe it’s not a little silly to save it simply because it was what she was wearing the first time her then-not-husband leaned down to kiss her lips, and because she imagines that it still bears a slight smell of smoke.

 **#17 - Tears**  
‘I told Will I was going to homecoming with Warren,’ Layla confesses, and Magenta promptly inhales her chewing gum; she spends the next few minutes coughing and feeling her eyes tear up as she tries not to choke and lets Layla pats her on the back – and when she finally is able to speak, she croaks something intelligible about stupid and desperate redheads and roughly wipes at the tears on her cheeks and tries to forget that the only thing on her mind during her brief encounter with asphyxiation was that you _can’t_ really lose what was never yours to begin with, and doesn’t this suit her right for never even trying?

 **#08 - Happiness**  
Magenta’s definitions twist and warp over time; for many years they’re still small things, simple things that make her smile and her heart beat just a little faster, until she grows older and happiness morphs from cloudless blue skies and the wind in her hair into something else; it’s not so much what she _has_ anymore, but what she _wants_ , and the lesson learned is that true happiness comes not with gain, but is purged and purified through the wait you have to endure before you achieve your wants, and emerges out of the ordeal as golden as the sun – Warren’s breath against her neck on Sunday mornings outshines everything she’s ever wanted before, and that’s why she knows she’ll never need anything ever again.

 **#36 – Market**  
Layla and Magenta go shopping together, because the boys’ birthdays are fast approaching (both of them), and this is the last farmer’s market Layla has left to visit; Magenta spends two hours amongst pots and vegetables and chicken coops before Layla settles for a T-shirt with a nature motif (ignores bothering to pretend she doesn’t notice her friend’s grimace of mock disgust) before they leave, pieces of hay sticking stubbornly to Magenta’s black velvet skirt; she herself only needs ten minutes in the obscure CD store on the corner of Root St. and Fifth to pick out the album Warren had eyed twice before setting back on the shelf the last time they visited, and only smiles as Layla comments about _that_ not being a very personal gift.

 **#41 – Completion**  
It starts with fire, and the way Warren smells as he shields her from the flames (thick black smoke into her lungs and his touch as he carries her away from the burning buildings and his father’s reach); and ten years later it ends with fire, a blinding flash and the heat on her skin as the timer for the nuclear bomb reaches zero and Warren’s hands grip her shoulders tightly against the villain’s laughter (it’s fitting, she has time to think as the circle is completed, that their ashes shall at least spend eternity as one even if they never had the chance to).

 **#10 - Ears**  
The eyes might lie, but the ears never deceive; that’s what Magenta’s been told, and what she’ll believe as she quickly steps back around the corner, quick enough not the get spotted but not so swift as to escape the sight of the blonde pressing her lips to Warren’s – Magenta closes her eyes, the scene already burnt onto her retinas, hammering heart comforted only by the fact that Warren’s voice is cool as the power the blonde wields, and the words he speaks holds no room for love or anything like it (when Magenta dares round the corner once again, he is gone and the girl stands alone, fists clenched and as white as the walls of the corridor, her breathing steady and in tune with the heavy footsteps of the pyrokinetic walking away).

 **#03 - Soft**  
There’s something wild about Warren; something untamed lurking just beneath the surface, and he can be as polite as can be, and open doors and pull out chairs and have the table manners of the Queen of England, and none of it will matter because the wilderness remains like a black haze covered by a thin layer of skin – had Magenta not known better, she would have thought him a shapeshifter (a wolf, or maybe something feline; large and strong, all muscle and claws and fangs and yellow cat eyes reflecting from within the shadows) – and it’s because of this that the ice girl leaves him within six weeks; Magenta doesn’t mind though (maybe it’s one little, scared guinea pig seeking something bigger and stronger to latch on to), because as long as Warren’s grip on her hand is soft and gentle, he can be as wild – and free – as he wants to be.

 **#50 - Supernova**  
Her father takes her outside on a bright night and tells of stars and supernovas, of explosions far out in the great expanse that is space and of suns dying, wilting like flowers in autumn cold; years later, when Ethan tries to describe the fire in Warren Peace’s eyes as he held up burning hands and watched Will crawl to safety, she attempts to wrap her mind around simple words like ‘fire’ and ‘heat’ but find them exceedingly inadequate, and it’s not until she closes her eyes that night and her memories paint failing stars across her sky of vision that she finds the words to describe what she’s witnessed that day.

 **#42 - Clouds**  
‘Warren’s almost smiling,’ Layla says, as if that’s supposed to mean anything; Magenta watches the blonde ice temptress’ fingers flutter over the skin stretched across Warren’s wrists, and the clouds that cover her vision are grey and murky, with no frame of silver lining at all.

 **#43 - Sky**  
In January she receives an invitation for a spring wedding, and in May she flies across the country to watch how under a clear blue sky, surrounded by the thick stems of the bride’s kindred spirits, Will threads a gold band onto Layla’s fingers and smiles in the sunlight; she meets Warren in high grass under the crowns of beach trees and he’s just as she remembers him – only a little bit less _angry_ – and that’s why she allows him to take her hand and pull her against him to find that the tickling smell of smoke clinging to his hair is just as she remembers it, too.

 **#09 - Telephone**  
Waiting by the phone is something Layla would have done (Magenta likes to think that she’s not _that_ desperate), and so she leaves it off the hook and takes a bubble bath, letting her hair fall down from their twin buns and settle around her shoulders as she sinks further down into the water; putting the receiver back in its place is an afterthought she has as she gets dressed, though when the phone finally rings she makes herself forget the way she has to smother the flutter in her heart and will her hands not to shake as she answers and Warren breathes a low ‘hey’ on the other end.

 **#38 - Gift**  
Warren never lets go of her hand, even when she sees (rather than _feels_ ) her grip tighten to the point of cutting off blood flow (breaking bones) – and as she leans back against the pillows, his face is still taunt and pale and she remembers that he never could stand seeing her in pain; it’s all worth it though, because as the bundle (ten fingers and ten toes and congratulations, the scrubbed figure says) is handed to him and he carefully cradles it in shaking arms, Magenta knows that the greatest gift she could ever give him is the opportunity to prove his fears wrong.

 **#47 - Moon**  
It was stupid and unplanned and a regular stroke of bad luck that they happened to stumble across the battle when they did; she goes down fast and early on, and Warren’s the first to tilt her head back and part her lips and _breathe_ into her (she only knows this because Layla tells her after the fact, voice lined with only the briefest of trembling), the first to let his fingers dig into her skin to feel a pulse, and the only thing she remembers for sure about that night is the faint sound of Will shouting in the background, and Warren’s face bathed in shadows as the moon paints a pale blue background against his silhouette.

 **#37 - Technology**  
Life is made up of reoccurring circles, and for Magenta the constant is technology, because she measures everything by Warren’s presence and has done for a long time; in the beginning there was Royal Pain and her mastery of everything technological (Magenta saw him first there – not a hero, but not a villain either – and for a moment all stood still); the middle came in the form of a dark room in a hospital, a cold and sticky mess on her stomach and Warren, eyes bright as fire, returning the squeeze of her hand as the small but constant heartbeat echoed through the room; the end (though he tells her it is only the beginning) comes now, with the stinging smell of disinfectant and the stabbing tone of the machines surrounding them, as his hand slips from hers (ring too small to move over her knuckles any more) and she lets him go.

 **#20 - Freedom**  
At thirty Magenta decides that purple highlights are too conspicuous for a mother of two and buys four boxes of black hair dye; she sets aside a sunny Saturday afternoon and slops the sticky mess onto her husband’s hair – clear red fading beneath the tar like guck – before doing the same to her own purple locks; in a world of heroes and villains and secret identities, distinguishing marks are to be well hidden, and as she washes the muggy dye off her hands she is all too well aware of the bright laughter outside (glimpses of black and purple and red silk shining in the sun) and is thankful that the prize of freedom comes at no higher than eight dollars a box.

 **#04 – Pain**  
Magenta finds that one never feels quite as alive as when one’s in love, only there’s actually nothing but the dull ache in her chest to remind her of the fact that she’s not dead – not yet – and that she still has an eternity left to watch from the other side of the looking glass as Warren’s hand grasps that of the Freeze Girl – the Ice _Bitch_ – and she’s again reminded – over and over and _over_ again – that her love for pain isn’t the only unrequited feeling pooling in her heart.

 **#26 - Forever**  
The markings are new – black and sharp, a stark contrast against her skin; ‘Rings can be lost,’ Warren says and runs his fingertips along the ink flame licking up her spine (she gasps and arches up against his mouth); ‘but this, this is forever.’

 **#06 - Rain**  
Once they got inside, and were dry and comfortable and not quite so cold as they were now – when Warren’s hair had stopped dripping and he didn’t look like a drowned cat, and Magenta’s boots weren’t letting water in to pool around her toes – then, that’s when she would ask him with a smile on her face why he couldn’t have waited until they were safely inside; but for now, all she wanted to do was enjoy the feeling of being kissed in the rain.

 **#48 - Waves**  
Warren’s a heavy sleeper, and Magenta can run her hand up and down the length of his spine or trail sloppy kisses down his shoulder as much as she wants – he won’t even shift to acknowledge her presence; so instead, she slides out of bed and shuffles into the kitchen and pours herself a glass of water, because everyone knows fire dislikes water and Warren is no different – and as she slides in under the covers again, her fingers make small waves of the liquid swell over the edge of the glass and she flicks droplets of it onto his skin, and watches them fizzle and dissolve before Warren turns over to pull her down for a kiss.

 **#12 - Sensual**  
It takes Warren three weeks to discover the spot behind her ear (not for lack of exploration), and Magenta hates that he is such a quick learner; hates that he only needs to push her down against the mattress and turn his head just _so_ , and she’s gasping and writhing and pushing against his smile; hates that all he has to do to make her come undone is _breathe_.

 **#32 - Confusion**  
Love makes people do strange things; Magenta knows this, because Layla just joined Warren Peace at his table, and she has no choice but to follow her friend’s move, even though the dark boy glares at her and practically bares his teeth, because if being a sidekick has taught her one thing it’s that you never show your fear in the face of evil (though Peace might not actually fit that bill _yet_ ); and then Will walks by, and Warren smiles (a slight twitch at one corner of his mouth before that beautiful display of straight teeth) and stands and lazily drags his eyes over her as if she was a guinea pig and he was a cat, and Magenta tells herself that Layla might be the desperate one, but Magenta just imagined Warren Peace running his lips down her neck, and what does that make _her_?

 **#28 - Sickness**  
She gets sick, violently and suddenly, in the girls’ restroom and can’t get up again; Layla smoothes back her hair from her face and helps her stumble out through the door and that’s when her knees give in and she’s enveloped in a faint smell of smoke – just like the forest fire so long ago ( _just_ like it) – and the leather is rough against her face; ‘Warren,’ Will says, because Will can fly and can get her home faster than anyone, but the smoke growls and shifts and Magenta breathes in deep as she’s raised into the air and there’s nothing but smoldering wood and ashes left.

 **#49 - Hair**  
She tells him as much as she is allowed to (far from enough), and finds temporary respite in kissing away his frown; at the dead of night she leaves with her mother (slips out of his arms and senses dark eyes open as she closes the bedroom door behind her) to case a factory south of the city and when she returns (six o’clock and he’s still awake and waiting for her) her head is full of plans and propositions and everything but the signatures on the file soon to be handed to the mayor of Maxville; and it’s just for a moment, as he throws back the bedcovers and she crawls into bed and he pulls her close, that she allows herself to forget what she’s seen and heard and sensed that night, and lets the smell of the conditioner he uses on his hair wash away the bitter stench of the blood spilt on that factory floor.

 **#14 - Sex**  
She doesn’t think of it very often, only sometimes (like when Warren rises from the steps of Sky High and bends down to pick up his bag, and his shirt kind of edges up and she’s treated to a view of a slip of tanned flesh), and it’s not like she wishes it’d happen (hot and wet and dark as they stumble towards her bed; images and sensations that disappear as she sighs and opens her eyes against the morning sunlight); she has Zach, and she’s fine with that, and it’s not at all like every press of the blond’s hand makes her remember that she’s made her bed and now she has to lie in it (literally).

 **#25 - Devotion**  
Solitary confinement means no visitors, and it’s only twenty five years after Warren pushes the veil away from her face that she gets to meet her father-in-law face to face; from the other side of the glass barrier that separates them Michael Peace smiles at her sadly, face a hollow copy of a mask of what her husband’s will one day become, and his fingers rise to meets his son’s through the steel grating above the glass panel; Baron Battle’s eyes are blank, and his hand trembles just so, and as Warren’s lips move in unspoken words, Magenta knows that this, _this_ is devotion.

 **#23 - Hands**  
Sometimes it’s hard to acclimatize oneself to not being small and furry, no matter how long one’s been able to change; Magenta notices this chiefly in winter times, when the air is cold and the melting snow seeps into her boots and she misses the feeling of fur covering her skin from tail to nose – these are the times when occasionally, if they’re alone, she can get Warren to wrap his arms around her shoulders and let her bury her head in the hollow of his neck; when he allows her to focus not on the biting wind teasing her hair but on the way strong and warm hands run up and down the length of her spine.

 **#31 - Home**  
Her father stands tall and straight, light grey suit covering his form as nothing else ever will, hair combed neatly and glasses perched perfectly atop a slender nose; tall, but their guest is taller still, dark and unruly and such a contrast to her flesh and blood that she hesitates as her father opens the door and greets them; ‘You must be Warren,’ he says and offers his hand, and in the background Magenta can see her mother turn away to hide a laugh.

 **#35 - Bonds**  
Warren has ink flames running up his forearms, and Magenta spends mornings tracing the lines with her fingers as he watches her in silence – sometimes it’s on the tip of her tongue to ask why he had them done, but then he shifts and the set lines up, and she sees it grafted into his skin; like bonds that bind his wrists together, shackles that tell him of who he is and who he can become and reminds him to never go there – the question dies in her mouth and she separates his wrists, watching as the connections disappear and the lines depict only fire once again.

 **#45 - Hell**  
It’s been years since Magenta first saw Warren mold and form the flames of fire in his palms into whatever he saw fit, long since she first experienced the heat hitting her face on and the fire teased her skin and danced around her like its reflection in Warren’s eyes; months since she found herself kneeling on the ground, looking up into the barrel of the golden Villain’s weapon and closed her eyes tightly, only to open them again and feel the flames dry the tears on her face and make the man who had once stood so triumphantly before her whimper and curl in on himself as he was eaten alive by the heat – it’s been longer than she can recall since she’s been able to associate fire and brimstone with Hell.

 **#07 - Chocolate**  
Mrs Stronghold turns down the heat in the room, and Warren looks self-conscious; when she offers them chocolate he politely declines (looks away as the box is placed on the living room table and left at the mercy of six teenagers); there’s heat rolling off him in waves, and Magenta can acutely feel the back of her shirt stick closely to her skin, just as she can envision each and every piece of candy in the box melting in the palm of his hand – a sticky, sweet thought of a mess that makes her eyes flutter shut and her mind promise her that once day, she will buy a box of her own and make him eat every single piece in it.

 **#16 - Weakness**  
‘Heroes aren’t supposed to have weaknesses,’ Mr Boy says as he hands out the essay assignments, adding, ‘but sometimes they give in anyway’; the paper in her hand has ‘Baron Battle’ printed on it in capital letters, and thumbing through the reading material she finds it hard to swallow as his life is condensed into twenty neatly typed pages; summarize and present, that’s what they’re supposed to do, because Sidekicks should know everything about the foe their Heroes might be facing in battle, and Magenta reads about Susan Valier who turned her back to all the values Sky High had taught her and chose the dark side before the light – at lunch, she sits at a table opposite the same woman’s son, and wonders if in ten years, someone will be writing essays about _her_ life.

 **#13 - Death**  
Magenta doesn’t know what to expect as she goes into her first battle – there’s smoke and ash in the air, and people are screaming – and that’s why she is so completely unprepared as Ethan stumbles and goes down beside her (hands covering a gaping wound in his shoulder) and as Warren yells at her to _hold him down_ – hold Ethan down? She doesn’t understand – and replaces Ethan’s hands with is own and burns him – screaming; Ethan is _screaming_ – burns him in what Magenta later recognizes as cauterization, as he does this she looks at his face and the soot covering it and caking together with the blood escaping from his split lip, and realizes that the breeze she felt just a moment ago in the heat of battle was Death barely passing her by.

 **#21 - Life**  
‘If life were to suddenly get fair, I doubt it would happen in high school,’ Will says, and three months later, watching Warren’s hand grip the one of a blond bespectacled ice charmer as he leads her onto the dance floor, Magenta tightens her own grip on Zach’s hand and marvels at the truth in her friend’s words.

 **#19 - Wind**  
It doesn’t take her long to discover how much she likes the feeling of the wind running through her hair; she spends breaks in her schedule by the very edge of Sky High, trying to focus on the clouds and the sun and not on his unyielding presence behind her or on the several thousand feet drop should she loose her footing – but then again, should she fall, she has the feeling that he would be not far behind as she spirals through the air toward the ground.

 **#01 - Comfort**  
Sometimes, not even being friends with Will Stronghold will help you against seniors and their taunts, and Magenta learns this the hard way as she is tripped on her way to class – laughter echoes and fades inbetween the hallway walls as her papers slowly float to hit the floor far after she has – and worn and beaten boots fill her view of vision; Warren wants to know who did this, and while Magenta will never tell, Warren has his ways of finding these things out anyway – come lunch he is in detention and two seniors are at Nurse Spex’s office, and at the end of the day – as Layla chides him for his actions and the boys want to know the details and Warren wears the frightened stares of his fellow students as a medal pinned upon his chest – Magenta is thankful for the comfort that he offers in his own, special way.

 **#27 - Blood**  
The first time Magenta kisses Zach she does it _hard_ ; presses against him, shuts her eyes and doesn’t open them ‘til she feels – hears – their teeth clash together and the sweet (bitter) taste of copper fill her mouth – she’s bit his lip and he’s bleeding, and she can only watch as he pulls away and runs off to the bathroom to tend to his hurts; a year later, she remembers this as she pushes Warren backward into her locker and invades his mouth like she did back then, only she doesn’t close her eyes this time and can so clearly see the red running down his chin until Warren (doesn’t bother to wipe it off) swoops down for another kiss, and this time she’s the one bleeding, eyes clenched tightly shut.

 **#18 - Speed**  
The new bike makes Warren charitable – he’s been saving for three years, he says – and Magenta doesn’t find it too hard to convince him to let her ride it; the sudden drop in altitude and desertion of gravity inbetween the school bus driving off the ramp and the rockets engaging terrifies Magenta, and she finds that this – straddling a loud machine that shoots down streets at speeds far too great for her liking – is almost as terrifying; only, this time she has Warren to press up against, his waist to wrap her arms around and his well worn leather jacket to bury her face in; inbetween her first whoop of surprise and terror as they take a curve and the bike tilts down towards the blurry asphalt beneath and the slow and rhythmic beating of Warren’s heart beneath her hands as they shoot down the deserted street, she finds that whatever terror she might feel is well worth it.

 **#22 - Jealousy**  
She comforts herself with the fact that he never would have agreed to take Layla to Homecoming if it hadn’t been to make Will jealous; it works, only the plan fails and Will doesn’t even show up, and halfway through the dance as the award is about to be presented to Will’s parents, Magenta tries to comfort herself anew with how at least he won’t _dance_ with Layla, and that the plan certainly _has_ failed – at least in the aspect of making Will jealous; she’s not as sure about herself yet.

 **#40 - Innocence**  
Magenta begins her search for innocence the day a group of militant Villains unsuccessfully stage an attempt on her mother’s life; she finds it in freshman year, on the form of a blonde Sidekick who likes to hold her hand beneath the table during lunch, and kiss her goodbye on the cheek when the bus pulls up outside her house in the afternoons; she finds it, but it doesn’t make her any happier, or any more fulfilled, and it’s only three months into junior year, when Warren corners her in an empty hallway on a Friday morning and she lets him run his fingers through her hair that she realizes that maybe she shouldn’t have been looking for innocence, but for someone who had _known_ innocence, like she had, and then lost it.

 **#29 - Melody**  
It’s spring, and the large windows of Sky High’s second floor are alight with sunshine – she hides there, in plain view, like a cat – a guinea pig – napping in the sun; he finds her in the middle of track four on her discman, and touches her arm – just _so_ – and sinks down onto the floor as she hands him one of her earphones, head resting partially against her arm; fingers dancing over marble floor picking out a slow paced rhythm out of guttural grunts and screams, and she closes her eyes and lets herself be lulled to sleep by the melody.

 **#33 - Fear**  
The screen falls away from the ventilation shaft with a dull thud against the floor – almost silent in the screams filling the gym – the metal glowing red hot; ‘Get in,’ Warren says and looks past Layla, and Magenta gazes back and finds that her heartbeat is louder and more terrifying than any weapon Royal Pain could ever hope to conceive.

 **#15 - Touch**  
He brushes past her in the hallway, his shoulder sliding softly against hers, and it’s all she can do not to turn and look at him; instead she waits until lunch, and when she takes a seat at their table she makes sure her knee touches his, just for an instant, before she shifts and withdraws – a slight blush is her promise, as the intake of breath is his pledge.

 **#11 - Name**  
Halfway through freshman year and Warren takes to calling Layla ‘Hippie’; Magenta waits with dread for a nickname of her own – Pig, or Rodent, or Rat Girl – but it never comes, and when Zach finally shortens her name to ‘Maj’ and the others pick up on it, Warren still doesn’t; and Magenta thinks – hopes – that maybe it’s because just like she enjoys watching him say it, he likes the way her name rolls off the tip of his tongue.

 **#05 - Potatoes**  
The Paper Lantern is a cozy place to be, Magenta finds as the waitress shows her to a table; the lighting is soft and warm and she orders a glass of water and spring rolls with fried rice – there aren’t any potatoes on the menu; and as she sips at her drink and waits for her food she prepares for First Contact - because her glass is half empty before the appetizers arrive and Warren will have to stop by sooner or later.

  



End file.
